


Escape Velocity

by dontletitbreakyourhearts



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:58:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontletitbreakyourhearts/pseuds/dontletitbreakyourhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian woke to a set of wide brown eyes and frantic muttering. He reached for the knife he kept under his pillow. It was gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape Velocity

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: Please be warned of some dissociative type things. It's a big part of this and I want to give you ample warning before you start reading.

Jim Moriarty liked to bake when there was a particularly difficult problem he was trying to solve. The need for precise measurements and a delicate touch distracted him long enough to come back to the issue with renewed thoughts.

That night, it was a pair of apple tarts consuming his mind. Jim had always liked apples. It was something about the sound they made as his knife clove their flesh into pieces suitable for use. He was arranging the thin slices of fruit into the tart shells when he noticed something wasn’t quite right. Jim wasn’t sure if it was the way his hands moved or if it was the way the light glinted off the now slightly sticky apple juice that coated his fingers. He attempted to push the emerging thoughts of _look.at.them.don’t those fingers seem a   little   short   to be yours?doesn’t it seem like that   skin   is a shade     too     light_? from his mind because that was not the problem he needed to get back to solving. He paused, walked to the sink, and ran his hands under the hottest water the faucet could provide.

 

_No. Pain_ ,he thought to himself.

_Definitely_ your _hands attached to_ your _body with nerves signalling_ your _brain that they are in pain and you should stop before you actually hurt yourself. Shut the faucet off, you moron, and get back to the apples before they oxidise and ruin everything. Not many left. Concentrate on the apples._

He turned back to his current work, eyes closed, and inhaled deeply. The sweet scent of the apples mingled with the mellow heat of freshly ground cloves.

_This. This is what you need._

           

Jim managed to arrange the last few apple slices into the inner ring of fruit and scattered some finely chopped pieces of candied ginger across the surface. It helped to concentrate on the objects themselves- the apples, pale, with a bit of bright green smiling out from the smooth edges. The ginger, deep gold and glittering. He reached for the pepper grinder, tall, made of dark wood, adjusted the grind to its finest setting and began turning the crank.

 

_Pepper. Spicy. Black. But ground so fine that you can barely see it. Unexpected. Ground. With a mill. In your hands. Someone else’s hands? Not your hands. Not_ my _hands._

           

He had stopped turning the mill and was staring at the ridges created by the tendons in the hand that was, seemingly, attached to his body. He did not feel the hand release its grip on the pepper mill, and noticed that the pulse of the vein running down the centre of the hand did not quite match with the beat of his heart. The mill clattered to the ground, and the man that was ( _is?_ ) apparently James Moriarty followed, but slowly, never letting those hands ( _those hands that were not, will not be, ARE NOT MINE)_ out of his sight.

 

_How long? How long has it been? How long have I been here? No. How long has_ this _been here? Not sure. I need to know. I need to tell- I need to_ check _._

 

~           

 

Sebastian woke to a set of wide brown eyes and frantic muttering. He reached for the knife he kept under his pillow. It was gone.

“No, no, no, they can’t have. Not you as well. No. No, no, it’s you. It has to be. They can’t have-” His boss cut himself off mid-sentence as he finally made eye contact with Sebastian in whatever small amount of light managed to enter through the open bedroom door. Moriarty paused for a second, then, “NO! NO IT’S NOT YOU! IT’S NOT YOU!”

He had pinned Sebastian onto his back, one arm above his head, the other at his side below the smaller man’s knee, before his outburst had finished. The sniper had found his knife, though he would rather it be in his hand than at his throat, and, not for the first time, was thankful that there were no firearms in the immediate vicinity.

“Where is Sebastian Moran?” came a whisper through a clenched jaw. “What have you done with him?”

Sebastian looked Moriarty dead in the eye, without blinking and replied, “Nothing, boss. It’s me. Swear it on m’life.”

“You’re _lying_ ,” hissed the reply, accompanied by the blade of the knife digging deeper into his neck.

“Well, then. If you don’t believe me, you’re just gonna have’ta kill me then.” Sebastian raised his head off his pillow, causing the blade to draw blood. “I did swear on m’life here, Jim.”

“Jim?”

“Yeah. ‘S you. Forget?”

Moriarty backed off slightly and gave his head a slight shake and blinked, as if trying to clear something from his eyes.

“Jim…”

“Yes. James Moriarty. That’s your name.”

“No. Yes. Is it? I’m not real. They took me. Replaced me with _this_.”

“No one replaced you, boss. Promise.”

“No, but how can you tell? _How can you tell?_ ” He seemed to lose the will to keep Sebastian down, and there was the slightest glimmer in his eye that hinted at a tear forming.

Moran was now able to wiggle his hand out from under Moriarty’s knee and, ever so slowly, move it to wrap around the hand still pressing the knife to his throat. “I can tell,” stated Sebastian, “because James Moriarty is the only person I’ve ever let pin me down.”

For the first time since he had looked at his hands earlier that evening, Moriarty took stock of where he was and what he was doing. He released his grip on his sniper’s wrist and on the knife, which was promptly snatched up by Sebastian, and moved to huddle on the far corner at the foot of the bed. Jim was coming back to himself now, but was still a little too shaken up for Sebastian’s comfort.

“Jim?”

“Yes?”

“List the planets in our solar system in order with their mass and escape velocities.”

“Mercury. Mass in kilometres: Three and three thousand twenty-two ten thousandths times ten to the twenty-third power. Escape velocity: four and one quarter kilometres per second. Venus. Mass in kilometres…”

As he listed the numbers he knew so well, he appeared visibly calmer. But that didn’t keep Sebastian from keeping a firm grip on the handle of his knife.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to tumblr users desmondsprettyface and msscullystarbuck for helping me out with editing! You're cool people.


End file.
